Sybil

At their next appointment, Sybil proves so evasive that Dr. Wilbur is unable to tell her about the personality disorder. In the appointment following, Dr. Wilbur immediately perceives that it is Peggy in the waiting room. Peggy tells the doctor that Stan had sent Sybil a “Dear John letter,” breaking up with her. Peggy is furious about the letter and fumes that Sybil can’t stand up for herself, and that Peggy has to do it for her.

Dr. Wilbur theorizes that Peggy carries the emotional impact of Sybil’s experiences, that perhaps she is a defense against anger. After Peggy leaves, Dr. Wilbur worries about Peggy out in the world, on her own: she is unsure of whether Peggy is a precocious child or an immature adult, and though Peggy seems assertive, and self-confident, she also seems incapable of always distinguishing the present from the past.

Meanwhile, Schreiber narrates for us a day in Sybil’s life as Peggy, after Sybil/Peggy leaves Dr. Wilbur’s office. After admiring pretty clothes in the windows of Madison Avenue, Peggy sees Penn Station and decides to take a train to Elizabeth. Walking around the unfamiliar town, with nothing much to do, she is relieved to see a car that she believes is her father’s car. When she can’t open the door, she feels locked out, and becomes furious, banging her handbag against a slightly open window and breaking it. A man comes over and insists it’s his car, and he and Peggy argue over whether she will pay for the broken window. He asks for her identification, and is confused when Peggy insists that she is not Sybil Dorsett. He wants to force her to pay and write her name down for the insurance. They struggle, he holds her to keep her from running away, and Peggy bites his finger. Suddenly, Peggy feels herself stopped from within, and feels Sybil reaching into their purse to pay the man $20.

When Peggy returns to the apartment, she decides to attend her graduate program’s pre-Christmas social, where she is a hit, doing an impression of an unpopular professor that has all her classmates gathering around laughing hysterically.

When Peggy shows up at Sybil’s next appointment with Dr. Wilbur, she does not mention the car window, or the party. She is in torment. She whispers, “the pain. It hurts” (74). She whispers that her head hurts, that “hands comin’ at you” are “hands that hurt” (76). Music hurts her, too. She seems to believe she is trapped somewhere and can’t get out, even when Dr. Wilbur tells her she can simply get up and open the door.

In the middle of the appointment, Peggy disappears, and Sybil returns in her place, asking if she had been in a fugue. When Dr. Wilbur asks Sybil if she has any painful associations with music, Sybil recalls that though she excelled at piano, she was afraid to practice because her mother was so overcritical of her playing. When Dr. Wilbur asks if she has any special associations with glass, she recalls an incident in which her cousin threw a pickle dish through some French doors, and then blamed Sybil for it. Sybil was punished harshly for her supposed misbehavior. When Dr. Wilbur asks Sybil about hands coming at her, Sybil becomes intensely uncomfortable.

As Dr. Wilbur readies herself to tell Sybil about Peggy, Sybil is suddenly replaced by Peggy, who decides to leave. Dr. Wilbur realizes that Peggy emerges in order to resist a diagnosis with which Sybil is unable to cope.

In March 1955, Dr. Wilbur opens the door to Sybil reading The New Yorker in the waiting room. She is more composed than Peggy. But when the doctor asks how she is, the patient says Sybil was too sick to come, so she came instead. Dr. Wilbur reels as the patient explains that Sybil tried and tried to get dressed this morning, but simply couldn’t. She introduces herself as Vicky.

Vicky moves freely and gracefully. She is wearing an elegant, multi-colored pastel dress, instead of the navy-blue, skirt-and-sweater set Sybil planned to wear. Vicky explains to Dr. Wilbur that she knows everything the others do, that she is in that sense omniscient. She says she comes from abroad, from a large family who is waiting for her in Paris. She hasn’t seen them in years, but they know she is here to help. They will come for her in time, and then they will all be together, because “They’re not like some other parents. They do what they say they will do” (84).

Vicky worries about Sybil to Dr. Wilbur. Vicky says Sybil worries too much and doesn’t eat enough, and, Vicky says, a little less self-denial and a little more pleasure would surely help cure Sybil. Vicky also tells Dr. Wilbur that Sybil is sick because of “something deep inside” that started before Vicky came to be, when Sybil was just a little girl.

Vicky also tells Dr. Wilbur that there is more than one Peggy. Dr. Wilbur has only met Peggy Lou, but there is also a Peggy Ann. Peggy Lou expresses anger, while Peggy Ann expresses fear; however, the two of them often do things together, and look alike. Vicky sketches a portrait of herself on Dr. Wilbur’s prescription pad–blonde ringlets–and then a portrait of Peggy Lou, who looks like Peggy Ann. They both have black straight hair worn in a Dutch cut.

Vicky tells Dr. Wilbur that there are many other personalities besides herself and both of the personalities named Peggy. She insists to Dr. Wilbur that it isn’t Sybil who is functioning in her body, but all of them: they are all people in their own right. Dr. Wilbur decides to enlist Vicky’s advice about how to tell Sybil about her diagnosis, and Vicky tells her that she should tell Sybil immediately that the personalities don’t do anything she wouldn’t like – they do things she can’t do, but they don’t do things that would make her angry. Before leaving, Vicky tells the doctor to count on her to get to the bottom of all the others’ problems.

When Vicky leaves Dr. Wilbur’s office, she meets up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a friend who is all her own–Marian Ludlow, a tall, handsome and sophisticated older woman, who shares her interest in high culture.

In the beginning of this chapter, Schreiber reviews some of the literature on multiple personality disorder that Dr. Wilbur looked at during the first months of her work with Sybil. At the time of Sybil’s treatment, there were ten recorded cases of multiple personality, the first in 1811. Seven of these ten cases were women, and three were men. The cases displayed marked differences. Some were dual personalities, in which the secondary personality exhibited very little independence in terms of moving about the world. Other cases were more like Sybil’s, in which multiple personalities acted as independent beings within the same body. Sybil would be the first case of multiple personality to undergo psychoanalysis.

Dr. Wilbur hypothesized that multiple shocks, early in life, had led to multiple selves personifying reactions to those childhood traumas. She would have to uncover this trauma, or these traumas, and because the personalities expressed repressed parts of Sybil, she would have to treat each individual personality’s trauma and response in its own right in order for the whole patient to get well.

In her next appointment with Dr. Wilbur, Vicky gives way to Sybil, who “awakes” knowing that she has been in a fugue. Dr. Wilbur gently leads her towards diagnosis, saying that she thinks Sybil knows that she has “lost time” in the doctor’s office. Dr. Wilbur tells Sybil that her fugue states are not blank, and that another person takes over for her. When she tries to tell Sybil about Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, and Vicky, Sybil becomes desperate, begging to be able to leave. Dr. Wilbur lets her go, but later that evening, Sybil’s roommate calls to tell her that Sybil has fallen apart. Dr. Wilbur rushes to Sybil’s apartment and is only able to calm her with the aid of a sedative.

Dr. Wilbur decides to get closer to the waking Sybil, convincing Sybil that Sybil is not a valueless person and that she regards Sybil as a gifted and interesting woman, one she’d be interested in spending time with even if she weren’t a patient. Dr. Wilbur invites Sybil to spend the day with her in Connecticut. Unbeknownst to Dr. Wilbur, several un-met personalities emerged during the car trip. Perceiving that the doctor cared about them, at the end of the day they agreed that they would go and see her.